Northern & Central Midwest

June, 2011
Regional Report

Web Finds

Container GardensContainer Gardens is an interesting website with hundreds of articles on all aspects of gardening in containers. The site doesn't contain many photos, but the articles are good and can give you some great ideas for using containers to make gardening more fun.

Clever Gardening Technique

Pot-in-Pot Method for Growing Beautiful Plants
Don't be tempted to fill your terracotta pot with soil. That makes it heavy and hard to change plants. Instead, keep a supply of black nursery pots and cut them to fit your decorative containers. Thislets you use all kinds of fun decorative pots and allows you to change out your plants when you want. Sit the nursery pot on top of a brick or stones if the decorative pot does not have drainage holes. This will allow your pot to drain freely. Be sure to check periodically if there are heavy rains, and pour off the excess water. Once your nursery pot is tucked inside the decorative pot, use sphagnum or Spanish moss as mulch to disguise the black pot and hold in moisture. If these are outdoor containers, simply remove the plants from the soil at the end of the season and store the black pot with the soil inside the decorative container for next year.